Many investors are bracing themselves for a tricky 12 months, with not less than a gentle recession looking likely . Due to “darkening” economic environment, fund manager Trent Masters of Alphinity Investment Management told CNBC Pro Talks last week that he doesn’t own any tech stocks, which have been very volatile prior to now 12 months. As an alternative, he picks stocks with one key quality: earnings resilience. Masters highlighted a core stock in his portfolio that he described as having “quite exceptional performance”: luxury powerhouse LVMH . “LVMH — very, very powerful business, very strong house of brands, the performance has been quite exceptional. You might have seen that organic growth running at about 20%,” he said. “And that has been with China, not likely having the identical level of growth they normally do due to the lockdowns that they’ve been experiencing.” LVMH owns firms starting from luxury brands Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, to cosmetics names corresponding to Fenty Beauty by Rihanna. The firm is heavily exposed to China , and is ready to profit from its reopening. “What we’ve got seen post Covid is an actual bifurcation between consumers, and this has flowed through to stronger performance amongst luxury brands. In inflationary times pricing power is critical and LVMH has demonstrated this,” Masters added. Through the pandemic, the “upper end tended to be fairly protected,” while the center and lower ends were more affected, he said. “Today, the performance of their business and the execution has been rock solid. And that is still a core position within the portfolio,” Masters said. Masters manages the Alphinity Global Equity Fund, which outperformed the MSCI World Index last 12 months. LVMH’s stock is up 18% prior to now 12 months — despite the bear market. Most analysts are bullish on the stock, with 81% of analysts covering it giving LVMH a buy rating, in line with FactSet, although they provide it potential upside of just 2% from its current price on average. Masters predicted double-digit growth for the corporate over the subsequent three years, adding that the stock has an affordable price for such a “top quality” business. He told CNBC Pro Talks that other stocks with earnings resilience include North America’s third-largest waste management company Waste Connections and cybersecurity firm Fortinet .
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